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Do Teachers Deserve All Their Holiday Time?

It’s almost March break and teachers will soon be getting a long-deserved week of rest and recovery.

Now, there are those who claim that teachers are overpaid for the amount of time they work and the number of holidays they receive. I, of course, disagree. Teachers are in a highly stressful job – a job in which they’re on-stage, performing in front of an audience, throughout their entire working day.

How many actors, disc jockeys, weathermen, or talk-show hosts perform for six or more hours in a row? Few radio announcer’s shifts last longer than three to four hours…because it’s hard to stay “on” for longer than that.

Teachers must be “on” for an entire school day. Then stay after hours to coach or supervise extracurriculars. Then go home to mark papers, tests, and essays and prepare for the next day’s lessons. And spend weekends away from home taking other people’s children to tournaments and games.

In fact, most of a teacher’s vacation time is really just reimbursement for time worked outside of the classroom. Do teachers deserve their holidays? You betcha!

The alternative is a generation of burned out teachers – teachers who don’t have the energy to entertain, to motivate, to intrigue, to capture the attention of students. Bored students don’t learn as well. Bored students drop out of school.

Want to hear a real example of poor value for wages paid? How about the $240,000 paid to an advertising agency for creating Scotland’s new slogan. “Welcome to Scotland.” Where can I get THAT job?